...or: Ouch, my knee hurts!
Brief backstory: After breaking some ribs early this year and realizing I wouldn't be able to participate competitively this rowing season, I decided to buy a bike and do the 2-day, 200-mile Seattle to Portland ride. Three and a half months later, I found myself geared up and starting off on my two-day adventure with 9000 other people.
Day one was great. I've described to others as mostly awesome with just a few moments of suck. Day two was, for me, not so awesome. It was mostly suck with maybe three moments of awesome. That's because my left knee, which had been giving me problems for the couple of weeks leading up to the ride, pretty much decided it was done with about sixty miles left until the finish. Of course, *I* wasn't done...so I just found some ice packs, popped some ibuprofen, slowed way down, and took more breaks. The second hundred miles took me almost three hours more than the first hundred, but I made it across the finish line around six on Sunday.
What I learned while biking to Portland...
- 30 and 40-something year old men on older LeMonds love to talk to me.
- I completely lose my tact/social nicety filter while going uphill. It's best not to talk to me then.
e.g.
Guy (obviously staring at my chest): I like your shirt
Me (rolling my eyes): You like my shirt, or you like my tits?
Guy turns bright red, stammers for a moment, stands up on the pedals and rides away...fast.
I laugh loudly and make my way over the crest of the hill then fly past him (while still laughing) on the downhill.- 200 miles is almost as hard on my hands as it is on my legs. I need new gloves.
- My legs are even more awesome than I ever thought.
- I really can will myself through pretty much anything.
- Beer is good.
- When I get tired, I talk to myself...out loud.
- And I cuss.
- Free creamsicles are awesome.
- Sometimes you can get hugs from wet, naked strangers in communal showers...you just have to ask for them. (Even if you were totally joking at the time, the wet-naked-stranger shower hug is really amusing.)
- The roads on the second day are more roly-poly than most people described. None of of it is particularly hard--they're all either short rises, or long shallow upgrades--they're just cumulatively tiring...especially when you're also dealing with slight headwinds (oh, and you rode a hundred miles the day before).
- I'm stronger than I thought I was.
- Beer is good.
- "The Hill" in Puyallup really does suck a little. But it is not the only one that sucks. The one into Napavine isn't exactly a treat, either.
- Going up and over the bridge in Kelso can also suck, and the expansion joints can jar your bones big time.
- Also, the (shorter but steeper) hill three miles from the finish in Portland pretty much sucks, too. (Three miles from the end?? If you don't think I was cussing up a storm while going up that thing, you would be very, very, very wrong. I was cursing the lineage of anyone having anything to do with the route planning for putting a hill three miles from the finish.)
- Clif Shot Bloks and Nuun keep me going without upsetting my stomach.
- Just because you're in Portland, it doesn't mean you're done. Expect to have a little mini-tour of Portland on your way to the actual finish line. (Don't overshoot the ramp to Furman, you'll end up on the freeway. Also, pay attention coming off the bridge in Portland, the drop back to the street is easy to miss and you could easily end up biting it off the curb...I zoned out a little and almost did that.)
- People yelling and cheering at the finish are kinda cool.
- Beer is good.
- Ice packs are the greatest invention ever.
And there you go. My STP '07 in bullet form.
I do have to say, despite my disappointment with the knee pain and resultant slow-down on the second day, I do feel like I accomplished Something Big this weekend. :D
